


I will be your Iron Curtain, I will be your Berlin wall (and I will never fall)

by Gorgeousgreymatter



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, It's like a medium burn you guys, Prison AU, Season 4 AU, also i'm so sorry this first chapter took so long to write omg
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:10:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4316388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gorgeousgreymatter/pseuds/Gorgeousgreymatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hears her, at night sometimes, when he’s walking the corridors, listening to the quiet, even breathing of the people he’s somehow, in this fucked up universe, wound up providing for. At the prison, with Beth, he’s seen the way they all notice, like they all believe she’s got the sun in her hair and sky in her eyes, and Daryl don’t doubt it’s the reason half the boys here are clamoring for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I buried a bone, but you don't know him

**Author's Note:**

> [A/N. Hello. I just caught up with the Walking Dead and these are my feelings about Beth and Daryl. There will also be lovely depictions of Carol in this because she is also wonderful. I like everyone in this bar, but Daryl Dixon especially. I tumbles @ whoinvitedthegadfly if you’re curious about my thoughts. Or not. *poof*]

I will be your Iron Curtain, I will be your Berlin wall (and I will never fall)

 

He’s not used to being around people like them, people who look at him like he matters; ones that say, “Hello, how are ‘ya, and how do you do,” and all of that smile-time bullshit. When he was a boy, it was a damn fine lucky day if he didn’t get woke by the rough heel of a boot, solid and aching to the chest, or of the stinging slap of the weathered hands of his father smelling like moonshine and bourbon. And not getting the belt— well that was like fucking Christmas in July, Tiny fuckin’ Tim and all. God fucking bless us everyone.

//

With the Woodbury residents swelling the ranks of their make-shift home, Daryl begins to feel the uncomfortably distracting sensation of being stuck in a room gasping on not enough air—of being squeezed and scraped into a box too small to hold his bubbling insides. He hunts more than normal, any game he can snare or shoot: deer, squirrels, possums, and braces of lean rabbits (enough for all them people to chatter like sparrows when he hauls back carcasses, his boots trailing blood through the jaundiced grass of the prison yard all the way to the outdoor kitchens.

                                                                                                                                                              

“ _Thanks for that deer, Mr. Dixon.”_

_“We sure don’t know what we’d do without you, here, son.”_

_“We sure do appreciate it, what you do here, man.”_

He wonders if it’ll ever get easier: accepting the handshakes they blindly offer instead of dodging the blows he’s always learnt to expect.  

 

Being here with these people, with _them_ , is making him think too damn much.

 

So he tries not to do it, most of the time.

//

He’s been preparing for the run at the Big Stop for awhile, and figures now’s a time as good as any considering the people they had, weather not too bad, not too many walkers groaning against the fences most mornings. When Michonne comes back—ambles through the fence covered in walker guts lookin’ straight out of one of those samurai flicks: the type of film his ma used to watch on grubby black-and-white t.v, chain-smoking her Pall Malls in the ancient, peeling sitting chair, _from before,_ it seals the deal in his mind. So he hadn’t been surprised at dinner that night, spoon scraping harsh against the bottom of her bowl, when Michonne had looked at him and said, “Tomorrow,” and he’d nodded, slurped down the last of his stew, and that had been that.

 

It’s the next day, and he’s out in the yard checking the cars and running point on their supply lists with Glenn. The Korean sits on the bed of a rusted-up Chevy Daryl’s currently stripping for parts, and it’s as much a surprise to Daryl himself that the man’s chattering is calm and steadying in its incessancy, like the hum of an old ham radio, or the ticking of a grandfather clock: it numbs his thoughts. The day’s a cold one for May, and the back of Daryl’s shirt is soaked with the morning’s dew (better’n sweat, he supposes), as he lies under the belly of the truck, goose-pimples crawlin’ all the way up his neck, socket wrench clenched in his fist.

                Daryl’s dead to the world under here, focused on the puzzle of wires and pipes, until something Glenn says actually manages to worm its way through Daryl’s deaf ears and to his brain.

                “I hate that guy,” Glenn says viciously. “Kissing her in front of everyone like that, in front of all of us. Maggie wouldn’t like it at all.”

Kissing? Her? Who?

“What?” Daryl rasps, right when a fluid line tears under his supposed-to-be-gentle touch. “Shit, fuck, god-damnit, useless piece of shit, son of a--.” The curses pour out of him natural as breathing, but when he rolls out from underneath the truck covered in engine oil and grass cuttings, he wishes they hadn’t.  

“So that’s what you did before, then? Mechanic? No! I got it: car thief.” Zach’s voice is as grating as the same inane questions he always asks, but Daryl brushes them off like the brake fluid he wipes from his face with the torn rag still tucked into his back pocket. Kid’s been trying to rile him since he got here, since he rolled up in that fancy-ass car of his with the crew of frat-boy-crew-cut-cronies.

“That ain’t nice, Zach,” a voice interjects, and it’s a soft one, with a familiar lilt like a southern songbird.

Daryl blinks. It’s the Greene girl, Beth, and college boy’s got his arm looped around her slight frame.

Zach’s lips curl in a smug smile before planting a kiss on Beth’s mouth, and he whispers something in her ear, something that ends with a wink and a squeeze of her narrow shoulders. She smiles.

 Daryl is suddenly annoyed. “Go round everybody up, kid. ‘Bout time to go,” he says, and there’s a pause where Daryl lights a crumbled cigarette from his shirt pocket and slips it into the corner of his mouth, where it hangs, clouding his face in tendrils of ashy smoke. “You wanted to come on the run, so go make yourself fuckin’ useful.”

                Zach doesn’t miss a beat, just grins and nods in Daryl’s direction, “Those things’ll kill ya’, bro,” before turning to Beth expectantly. “Say goodbye and wish me luck?” And Daryl notes with interest that she doesn’t say anything back, just kisses the boy quick, and Daryl catches that twitch in her eye and the way she seems to pull back from the boy’s clumsy, reaching mouth.

                Daryl’s pretty sure its Glenn making that fake retching sound from behind him.

Zach’s gone, and Beth’s still standing there watching them both, watching _him,_  scuffing the heels of the same ratty cowboy boot’s she’s worn since the Hershel house was overrun. Daryl can see there’s peach-pink fading in her cheeks, and she’s bitin’ her lip like she’s thinking as hard as he’s tryin’ not to.

“That guy sucks, Beth, seriously,” says Glenn, shaking his head before heading off to kiss his own woman goodbye.

Beth smiles again, shrugs, and she’s still watching _him_ like she’s expecting him to say something, anything, her lookin' all earnest and bright-eyed shit.

So he does, finally, leaning against the cab of the truck, her still scuffing her shoes and him still smoking his cigarette, but she’s closer somehow and it sets him on edge, fingers tightening around his dirty hankerchief.

“You two; it’s like a damn romance novel, ain’t it?” He crushes the last of his cigarette under his boots and curses softly, wishing for another.

                Beth stares at him for a beat too long before offering, “He reminds me.”

                Daryl says nothing to this, and it’s another second before she adds, “You know, that we’re all still…alive.” She says it in that way that only Beth can, as he’s observed over his time with the girl: that there’s some kind of strange, unknown hope out there for all of them that only she can see. After all, she’s been the one still singing songs while the rest of them stay quiet as ghosts. He hears her, at night sometimes, when he’s walking the corridors, listening to the quiet, even breathing of the people he’s somehow, in this fucked up universe, wound up providing for. At the prison, with Beth, he’s seen the way they all notice, like they all believe she’s got the sun in her hair and sky in her eyes, and Daryl don’t doubt it’s the reason half the boys here are clamoring for her.

                “Gotta get going,” Daryl finally says, banging his fist on the hood of the van. Those blues eyes of hers are blown wide open like a window, and the closeness is off-putting. He ain’t no teenage boy from Woodbury.

                So, when she reaches out, quick and sudden, tugging on some strands of his hair, he visibly flinches, the contact jarring and less-than-welcome. She recoils, but doesn’t seem hurt or surprised by his reaction. She just smiles again, all teeth, before murmuring, “You had grass in your hair. See you later, Daryl.”

 

So he doesn’t get a goodbye either.

 

She walks away, and Daryl’s heads left spinning all the way to the Big Stop.

 

 

 


	2. I wanna hunt like David, I wanna kill me a giant man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I'm just uploading this as parts are "completed." It's easier to keep my momentum going if I just post what I write every day. That's my new thing: writing every day. 
> 
> In the words of Chuck Shurley: WRITING IS HARD YOU GUYS.

I want to hunt like David, want to kill me a giant man

The run is a disaster, just one fuck up right on top of the other, until they’re all buried deep under a mountain of shit (or a giant fucking helicopter, to be more accurate). Once Daryl manages to free Tyreese from the wreckage, they both force Bob out with choking grips on the scruff of his collar. They’ve all barely managed to make it outside before Daryl fucking loses it. He shuts his eyes and all he can see is Zach’s bloody, broken, torn-up face, hear the screams ringing in his head like someone’s fired a gun off too close to his eardrums. 

His blood is already sizzling when he finally looks in Bob’s bag and sees it empty, save for a single dusty bottle, and then Daryl’s seeing just as red as the wine sloshing around inside of it. The weight of the thing is heavy in his hand, and it feels like lead sinking to the pit of his stomach. When he rears back to smash it to the ground, he meets Bob’s pleading, desperate gaze, and the sight sickens him. There’s the ugly, naked shadow of Merle in their depths, back when his bastard brother used to run his mouth off on crank, and the cruel ghost of his father, eyes like the day he nearly busted Daryl’s teeth in back when Daryl was eight—the day he’d foolishly poured all the liquor in the house down the rusty bathroom drain thinking it’d finally get his mama to stop crying. It hadn’t.

So Daryl’s got Bob backed up against the wall, a strained forearm against the man’s trachea, pressing hard, before Daryl even realizes it’s the force of his own body behind it. “Enough,” says Tyreese, all gentle and coaxing, like Daryl’s some kind of spooked horse. Daryl’s shoulders go slack and he backs away, snarling in disgust, but still acquiescing, nodding his head as Tyreese leads Bob away to the car. And the words still echo in Daryl’s head, those murmuring about choices being made, ‘bout none of them being able to change nothin’. 

It’s grave silence all the way back to the prison, apart from Bob’s quiet, hiccupped sobs, and Daryl’s bruised knuckles are white from his relentless grip on the steering wheel.

“I can tell her,” Michonne says quietly, her slim, dancer’s feet up on the dashboard like she’s just a coed road-tripping on spring break, ‘cept she’s also still washing rotting guts and walker blood off the bright steel of her blade. Daryl’s covered in blood too—he can smell it, feel the stickiness of it drying on his grimy skin. He wonders how much of it belongs to Zach. 

“Gotta be me,” is all he grits out, jaw clenched as hard as his fingertips around the clutch when Sasha waves them through the gates, before they get out one person less and mostly empty handed. Rick, Maggie, and the others come out to meet them, and Daryl can see with just a cursory glance that Beth isn’t among them, and he brushes past the grasping hands and inquiring glances until he’s lost in the dark corridors of the prison walls. He doesn’t have to look back toward the yard to know that Rick’s got his head hung low in grief. Daryl can feel that collective pulse of loss just fine enough alone, in here.

It’s late, quiet, and the cell block could be a tomb if it weren’t for the shallow, even breathing of the people inside the cells. “Little boxes, little boxes,” he mutters into the darkness, fingers still fiddling with the tails of the arrows in his bow. He can recognize most of the occupants by sound alone now from enough nights of walking the halls, just listening to them: Lizzy and little Mika, the Samuels girls, who mumble soft and sweet like a pair of nesting turtledoves while their father snores (as loud as one of the few Grizzlies Daryl’s ever had the misfortune of crossing). And there’s Patrick, who sputters and gasps, asthmatic and fretful in his bunk—first time Daryl’d heard the boy in the night, he’d been certain he’d died or somethin’ from the way Patrick’s lungs seemed to frantically chase the air. If he shuts his eyes, Daryl can almost pretend like he’s underwater here, floating in a sea of breathes, lost in waves. It’s somehow even quieter, here in the fog of white noise. 

There are dim shadows of candlelight cast on the walls at the end of the hall: Beth’s cell. She may not have been waiting outside for their return, but she’d certainly been waiting up for something (or somebody). Daryl pauses, almost like he’s scenting the air, before breathing deep and approaching the grate. He’s painfully aware of how his boots sound on the ground, the thud of them akin to him to the snapping of dry twigs in the middle of a hunt. But Beth ain’t no Grizzly bear, coyote, or wildcat. 

She’s a seventeen-year-old girl.

This, he realizes, is somehow worse in its own way.


	3. I left my heart to the wild hunt a-comin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this instead of finishing my actual short story for possible actual real money. Cuz I'm actually the worsssssst.

Daryl is painfully aware of the heaviness of his footfalls as he peeks into the girl’s room, his grimy fingers clenching the cell bars like they’re the only thing holding him up, and maybe they are. His skin feels clammy, feverish, and in an instant he feels her eyes, gaze both bold and unwavering, snap up to meet his. In the dimness of the candlelight, her eyes glow, reflective in the darkness like an animal he’s been trained to hunt since birth.  
He says nothing, but he knows she knows, without saying a word. There’s a flush in her cheeks as she speaks, and her voice is so quiet yet the loudest thing he thinks he’s ever heard.   
“It wasn’t your fault,” she murmurs, and she’s getting off her bunk now, moving all slow and quiet towards him.  
“I fucked up. I let him die. I lost---I,” he stutters, feels backed into a corner, but the damn girl just doesn’t relent, with her earnest gaze, big fucking doe eyes.   
“I was happy just to know him, I don’t---you know I don’t cry anymore…” she says, her thin, pale fingers fiddling with the strings of her blouse. She’s real close now and Daryl can smell her: soap and sweat, the sickly sweet of baby powder, wildflowers, the same kind that tickle his nose. And he stiffens when he feels her against him, but he really shouldn’t be as surprised as he is at the contact. Beth was all warmth and coy smiles, maybe she was used to it--people just basking in her light.   
Daryl always thought she kind of looked like the sun.   
Daryl flinched under most people's gaze, save maybe Rick, or Carol, and thought life in the shadows suited him just fine.   
Beth didn’t seem to care about any of that.   
“I keep on losing people,” he says, shaking her off finally, feeling the moment stretching on too long for his comfort. Not like he was used to this kind of affection. He’d never had his father's, and his mother’s was always taciturn, all quiet, like she was keeping him at arm’s length for his own good. For his own protection. Not that it had done shit; the scars on his back were proof enough of that failure.   
“It’s not your fault,” she repeats. It’s like a mantra coming from her, a little prayer, Daryl thinks. He wishes he believed her.   
Her hand’s still on his shoulder. She’s so small. Too small. He finds himself eying the sharp indents of her collarbone and her skinny wrists, gripping him tight. She must not be eating enough. He finds this distressing, and even more so, just exactly how distressing he finds it. His hand finds hers, his palm huge and rough, blanketing her delicate fingertips.   
“Don’t waste your time worryin’ bout me, girl.” He growls, short, feeling cornered again.   
“Daryl,” she starts, but he’s gone, already at the door.   
“Quit it, girl. Don’t bother.”   
Whatever she was. It’s was too much for him. Too big. Too bright.   
He wasn’t ready.


End file.
